At least 17 police officers were injured during serious rioting in North Belfast last night.

At least 17 police officers were injured during serious rioting in North Belfast last night.

They were attacked when rival nationalist and loyalist crowds clashed and then turned their venom on the riot police sent in to keep them apart.

Three Catholic youths were also injured and taken to hospital when they were hit by shot gun pellets as crowds clashed. Their injuries were said not to be serious.

And a 13-year-old schoolboy was taken to hospital after being injured when his school bus was stoned as it passed through the Ardoyne area.

Police came under attack from both sides with petrol bombs, fireworks, stones and bottles raining down on them.

A petrol bomb thrown by loyalists destroyed an armoured police car, said a spokesman.

The violence was sparked by a resumption of disturbances at the flashpoint Holy Cross Primary School where several windows were broken and cars attacked when Catholic parents collecting their children from school faced abuse.

The school will be closed today in the hope the situation can be resolved before a fresh and lengthy loyalist protest starts.

He said: "Like any other decent, reasonable person tonight I shake my head in disgust and consternation."

And Dr Reid told the troublemakers: "For God's sake think of the children, think of your own communities and think of the reputation of the many, many decent people in Northern Ireland who are watching what is going on with disgust and total disappointment."

Expressing clear exasperation, Dr Reid said: "It seems there are people who are so burdened by the sick hatred, sectarian division, fear, pain and murders of the past that they can't come to terms with trying to resolve differences by means other than violence.

"There is no place for this level of violence, for any level of violence."

He did not care what caused the flare up, he said, there was no justification in "gangs of men going into a school".

Dr Reid revealed that 200 police backed by 200 troops were on the north Belfast streets trying to end the violence.

Ulster Unionist First Minister David Trimble and SDLP Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan said the violence was "disturbing" and called for a halt.

North Belfast Assembly member Billy Hutchinson of the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party said people in the area blamed parents for starting the trouble.